In an earlier section of Lesson 1, it was stated that an electrical attraction would be observed between a charged object and a neutral object. If a charged plastic tube is held near to neutral paper bits, theattraction between the paper and the plastic would be sufficient to raise the paper off the table. If a rubber balloon…
The behavior of an object that has been charged is dependent upon whether the object is made of a conductive or a nonconductive material. Conductors are materials that permit electrons to flow freely from particle to particle. An object made of a conducting material will permit charge to be transferred across the entire surface of the object. If charge…
Suppose that you rubbed a balloon with a sample of animal fur such as a wool sweater or even your own hair. The balloon would likely become charged and its charge would exert a strange influence upon other objects in its vicinity. If some small bits of paper were placed upon a table and the…
As discussed in a previous section of Lesson 1, atoms are the building blocks of matter. There are different types of atoms, known as elements. Atoms of each element are distinguished from each other by the number of protons that are present in their nucleus. An atom containing one proton is a hydrogen atom (H). An…
Basic Terminology and Concepts The Structure of Matter There is a large overlap of the world of static electricity and the everyday world that you experience. Clothes tumble in the dryer and cling together. You walk across the carpeting to exit a room and receive a door knob shock. You pull a wool sweater off…
Calorimetry is the science associated with determining the changes in energy of a system by measuring the heat exchanged with the surroundings. Now that sounds very textbooky; but in this last part of Lesson 2, we are going to try to make some meaning of this definition of calorimetry. In physics class (and for some, in chemistry class), calorimetry…
On the previous page, we learned what heat does to an object when it is gained or released. Heat gains or losses result in changes in temperature, changes in state or the performance of work. Heat is a transfer of energy. When gained or lost by an object, there will be corresponding energy changes within that…
What Does Heat Do? Lesson 1 of this chapter focused on the meaning of temperature and heat. Emphasis was given to the development of a particle model of matter that is capable of explaining the macroscopic observations. Efforts have been made to develop solid conceptual understandings of the topic in the absence of mathematical formulas. We…
On previous pages of this lesson, we have learned that heat is a form of energy transfer from a high temperature location to a low temperature location. The three main methods of heat transfer – conduction, convection and radiation – were discussed in detail on the previous page. Now we will investigate the topic of the rate of…
If you have been following along since the beginning of this lesson, then you have been developing a progressively sophisticated understanding of temperature and heat. You should be developing a model of matter as consisting of particles which vibrate (wiggle about a fixed position), translate (move from one location to another) and even rotate (revolve…